Suite Sales

There has been some talk that the financial crisis -- which, one would assume, would hit New York harder than most places -- would cut into ticket and luxury box sales in the city's new stadiums. That may be just talk:

Executives at Yankee Stadium are monitoring the economic situation but have not seen any effect, said Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman. She did not provide specific sales figures, but the luxury suites are nearly sold out, according to news reports. The same is true at the Mets’ Citi Field, said Dave Howard, the team’s executive vice president for business operations.

“Timing is a part of this,” he said. “The firms we’ve sold to haven’t had any major issues, and the people who have them realize they’ve got great value for the quality of what we’re offering here.”

I can't help but read that second paragraph as wishful thinking. Sure, the timing of it all means that many commitments were made before the crisis truly took hold, but to suggest that a sale is safe because "the firms we've sold to haven't had any major issues" is rather silly. No one thought Bear Stearns or Lehman or any of the others were going to have any major issues either.

At any rate, the article has little if any specifics on box sales because, according to the article, "the luxury-suite market is intensively secretive." Too bad these stadiums aren't, you know, funded by taxpayer dollars so that we could see how our investment is paying off.